Sign of things to come

The household charge is a stop-gap measure that will lead to property and water taxes in the next two years. It is too much for the ordinary citizen to bear, argues Mick Barry

IT STARTS at €100 and will rise to €1,000 and more very quickly.

The household tax is an interim tax, paving the way to a full property tax in 2013 and a water tax in 2014.

The Government simply does not have the data necessary to implement a property tax and a water tax. Household tax registration is aimed at providing them with precisely the information needed.

After telling the nation last month that the household tax will cost households a mere €2 per week, Fine Gael ministers let the cat out of the bag one week later when they announced that consideration is being given to fast-forwarding the property tax to 2013.

The Commission on Taxation report published in 2009 recommended that a property valued between €150,000 and €300,000 be charged over €550 a year in property tax, with a property valued between €300,000 and €450,000 to be charged nearly €1,000.

Of course, property tax may well be introduced at lower rates than this but does anybody doubt that the rates will move speedily toward these levels? Can anyone seriously deny that property tax, coupled with water tax, will quickly approach the €1,000-a-year mark?

Last July, John Fitzgerald, a senior economist with the Government’s semi-official thinktank, the ESRI, told Matt Cooper’s Today FM show that the combined cost should, in his opinion, be about €1,200 a year.

For more than three years, austerity measures have rained down on the heads of ordinary working people and their families. Mass unemployment, pay cuts, tax hikes, cuts to social welfare entitlements, cuts to essential social services — these have been the order of the day. The household tax, property tax and water tax are the latest in a long line of such policies.

These policies are unjust, unnecessary and insane.

They are unjust in the sense that the crisis was made by reckless bankers and speculators and yet the people who are being made to foot the bill are the poor, bloody infantry.

They are unnecessary in the sense that there is an alternative.

For example, later this month the state will pay out over €1bn bailing out un-guaranteed bondholders in what used to be Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish Permanent Building Society. If this payment was cancelled, the state would save a sum of money nearly eight times the entire take targeted from the household tax for 2012. If the Government was interested in replacing the property tax with something that was genuinely “progressive” they could shelve it in favour of a wealth and assets tax that would raise income from the mansions of the superwealthy.

They are insane in the sense that hitting the ordinary punter in the pocket again and again and again can only slash demand and send the economy into a vicious downward cycle. The household tax and other austerity policies will worsen the economic crisis rather than resolve it. It is an austerity measure through and through — it will not improve council services by one iota nor health or education, or any other essential service, for that matter.

The campaign against the household tax represents an opportunity for ordinary people to resist the austerity agenda and demonstrate a groundswell of popular feeling for a real alternative.

Sensing that such a groundswell of popular anger may crystallise around this issue, the Government has ditched gentle persuasion in favour of taking out the big stick.

We are now told that failure to register for the tax by March 31 will leave a citizen open to the possibility of being brought before a district court and being hit with a “Class C” fine, ie, a fine up to a maximum of €2,500.

What a scandal this is: A Government which continues to bail out greedy and reckless bankers and speculators threatens massive fines against ordinary citizens who refuse to sign up for an unjust tax aimed at funding that bailout. Furthermore, the Government is threatening to bring in legislation that would allow courts to deduct such fines from wage packets and social welfare payments. No doubt James Connolly and James Larkin are spinning in their graves.

However, mass non-registration can defeat the threat of mass fines and deductions. If, for example, one million households were to refuse to register, the Government would be faced with the impossible challenge of trying to take one million people to court. This campaign will also ask trade unionists to boycott any work involved in penalising ordinary citizens who refuse to pay this unjust tax.

The campaign aims to establish mass non-registration and mass non-payment as facts on the ground by St Patrick’s Day (two full weeks before the registration deadline) to demonstrate clearly that civil disobedience and defiance of an unjust law can defeat the Government’s agenda on this issue.

Mockers may scoff and no doubt they will, but they would do well to remember the lessons of the poll tax in Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They might care to study the lessons of the anti-water tax campaign which defeated a coalition government in this state in the mid-1990s. Last, but not least, they might care to note the submerged anger in the housing estates of this country and wonder if that anger might emerge around this issue in the weeks and months ahead.

* Cllr Mick Barry (Socialist Party) is a founder member of the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes The campaign is appealing for volunteers and can be contacted at 1890 989800.